In case you didn't get the memo, there's been a two year long all-out-knock-down war in a hotly contested battle between two rival digital disc consortiums -- Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD -- in an effort to unseat the aging DVD format with a new High-Definition standard for video and home entertainment.

The winner of this brawl, or so called "Format War", will be crowned king of the digital disc formats and take top honors as the next generation HiDef video disc for consumers worldwide. With BILLIONS of dollars at stake in licensing fees and royalties, the fight has been down right nasty.

Now the good news:  Blu-ray has won.

TIP » A Blu-ray player will play any existing DVD and make the picture look even better. So your current DVD collection is safe.

Well...if the Format War passed you by like a gamma-ray streaking down from outer space, don't feel bad, you didn't miss much. Most of the world wasn't paying too much attention either.

Just to give you the last chapter in this story, the final blow to HD-DVD came in January 2008 when Hollywood heavy weight Warner Bros Studios announced they would only release their home video titles "exclusively" on Blu-ray after more than a year of releasing on both HiDef formats. With Warner Bros massive collection of catalog movie titles, and existing support from Sony, Disney and 20th Century Fox, the deal for Blu-ray's success was sealed. HD-DVD was quickly ushered out the backdoor to be buried along side a number of other technology misfortunes like the Betamax.

Toshiba Corp., the primary sponsor of the HD-DVD format, has announced that as of March 2008 production of all HD-DVD players will cease. Universal Studios, the primary studio backer of the format, along with Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks, will likewise suspend their HD-DVD operations by early Summer 2008 effectively killing off the format entirely. Early adopters whom already own players will be left out in the cold with no new movie titles to purchase.

With the whole bloody Format War finally behind us, let's turn our attention now to Blu-ray disc itself and how to put together a nice Blu-ray system for your home theater that will blow you away. We'll also show you how to integrate Blu-ray in with existing audio/video equipment you may already own and some of the trade-offs of doing so.

KNOW THE LINGO! » Tech gadgets cannot be truely cool unless they have an acronym. Blu-ray Disc is also known as "BD" or "BR".

But first, let's answer the question..."What is Blu-ray disc"!?

THIS LENS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT
 

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